


Is There Something On My Face?

by buoyantsaturn



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan, The Trials of Apollo - Rick Riordan
Genre: 5+1 Things, Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, there's more characters but they dont do anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-15
Updated: 2019-02-15
Packaged: 2019-10-27 21:46:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17774777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/buoyantsaturn/pseuds/buoyantsaturn
Summary: 5 times Will has something on his face and 1 time Nico has something on his.





	Is There Something On My Face?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elibeeli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elibeeli/gifts).



> man oh man im CRANKING OUT these fics huh  
> i hope you like it!!

I.

 

Halfway through Will’s first semester as a transfer-junior, Will found himself distracted by the prettiest boy he’d ever seen. His roommate had turned out to be a real pain in the ass, which forced Will out of the dorm whenever he wanted to study. He ended up doing a lot of his studying in the cafeteria - or at least he  _ used to, _ before he started spending more time staring across the room than down at his textbook.

The boy was  _ beautiful. _ Will had no idea what his name was, had never even seen him anywhere outside of the cafeteria, but Will was in  _ awe _ of him. He’d spent enough time staring that he knew the boy’s hair was a very dark brown, not black like it seemed to be outside of direct light, and knew that his rare smiles lit up his entire face. As soon as Will saw his black leather jacket or heard his beautiful laugh, he was completely unable to focus on his homework for the rest of the evening.

Will was pretending to study one late afternoon - he  _ really _ needed to actually study for an exam the next morning, but he couldn’t manage to focus. His eyes had caught on the familiar black leather jacket a few tables away, and he hadn’t been able to look anywhere else since. It wasn’t until Pretty Boy got up to put his dishes away that Will finally ducked his head back to his textbook. He tried to act casual, taking a sip of his coffee just as Pretty Boy walked past, but just as Will’s gaze flickered up -  _ completely unintentionally - _ their eyes met. Will gasped, inhaling coffee and immediately starting to cough and feeling coffee spill down his chin.

He heard a snort from somewhere in front of him, and as Will raced to grab napkins from the dispenser on the table, Pretty Boy said, “You’ve got something on your face.”

By the time Will had cleaned up his mess, Pretty Boy was gone and Will was  _ thoroughly  _ embarrassed. And his textbook had a coffee stain that he wouldn’t be able to hide. So much for returning it at the end of the semester.

 

II.

 

Will nearly had a heart attack when he saw Pretty Boy from the cafeteria walk into his psych class. He hadn’t used the cafeteria to study since the coffee incident, which meant that Will had successfully avoided seeing Pretty Boy for the rest of the first semester. Now he was walking through the lecture hall, searching for a seat as Will slumped down in his own seat to avoid being seen.

Thankfully, Pretty Boy chose to sit a few rows in front of Will on the opposite end of the row, so Will still had the perfect opportunity to admire him from afar for three hours every Tuesday afternoon. He hadn’t had the easiest time focusing on the lecture as his eyes kept drifting toward a dark head of hair, but he’d managed to take half a page of notes, so he figured it was better than nothing.

Will thought he’d gotten away unnoticed, but when the professor announced a ten minute break, somebody sat down beside Will. For a second, he was afraid they’d just shown up and were going to demand Will share his few notes on the first half of the lecture, but then he looked up. And he didn’t stop looking.

“Is there something on my face?” Pretty Boy asked. 

“Um. What?” Will asked, trying to look away. Why couldn’t he stop staring?

“You’ve been staring at me for the last hour,” Pretty Boy explained. “So, what? Do I have something on my face? What’s with the staring?”

Will felt himself flush. “No, uh. I just… I, uh, I think you’re pretty.”

Pretty Boy looked surprised, but not all that upset. “Oh,” was all he said. Then he pulled up the desk attached to the auditorium seat, took his notebook out of his bag, and got comfortable. The lecture started up again, and Will realized that Pretty Boy wasn’t going to move back to his seat. He was even more tense and unfocused for the second half of the lecture, spending more time chewing on his pen than he did using it to write notes.

After making only a few more notes in his notebook, the lecture ended, and Will slowly started packing up his things. He noticed Pretty Boy beside him packing up much quicker, setting a slip of paper on Will’s desk before he stood up and pulled on the straps of his backpack. 

“By the way,” Pretty Boy started with one corner of his lips quirked up, “you have ink on your face.”

Will wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand and saw that it came away smeared with black ink. The pen he was writing with, which he’d stuck in the spine of his notebook, was cracked open and had ink spilling down the side. He groaned and buried his face in his hands for just a second, but when he looked up again, Pretty Boy was gone. 

Will picked up the slip of paper that Pretty Boy left behind. One it was a series of numbers followed by  _ Nico. _

 

III.

 

For their third date, they went out for ice cream. It was  _ way _ too cold for ice cream, in Will’s opinion, but Nico had a craving, so they drove to the nearest Dairy Queen - thankfully one with indoor seating. They sat across from each other at a booth - Nico got an Oreo Blizzard, while Will just got a soft serve cone - and complained about their classes. 

Will had gotten better about not staring so much, or maybe he just felt like it wasn’t staring anymore since he was allowed to look, and he’d even caught Nico staring a few times. Like after Will licked up an ice cream drip and looked up to see Nico’s eyes locked on his face. 

“You’re staring,” Will teased.

Nico rolled his eyes with a smile. “You’ve got ice cream on your nose.” He leaned forward and swiped his finger over the tip of Will’s nose, collecting the ice cream there, before he licked his finger clean.

“Oh.”

Suddenly, Nico was up out of his seat and moved onto the bench beside Will. “You’ve got something else on your face,” he started, reaching up to turn Will’s head toward him. “Right...here.” Nico pressed his lips to Will’s. 

Will felt all of the air leave his lungs. His heart started pounding, and he couldn’t feel anything other than the cold ice cream cone in his hand and Nico’s lips on his own. He gasped when Nico pulled away and blinked his eyes open slowly.

“Did you get it?” he asked.

“What?”

“You said I had something on my face,” Will reminded him. “Did you get it?”

Nico snorted. “It was  _ me, _ stupid.”

“Oh!”

Nico grinned before pulling him in for another kiss.

 

IV.

 

Nico was pretty sure they’d gone to a party last night. He didn’t remember actually  _ being at _ a party, but he was so hungover that he was certain he’d actually gone. He rolled over in an attempt to hide from the sun shining in through a crack in his blinds, and found himself pressed against another body.

He panicked for a second before he recognized Will’s University of Texas t-shirt - the school he’d transferred from - and relaxed. He’d never thought he’d feel so comfortable sleeping next to someone, but Will practically radiated heat and a comforting vibe, and Nico couldn’t help to feel drawn to him. He peeked up to get a glimpse of Will’s sleeping face, and started cackling.

Will groaned, curling in on himself and trying to hide his face in his pillow, but Nico grabbed his face to keep him from moving. 

“Nico, shut  _ up,” _ Will whined, cracking one eye open to glare at him. 

“Your  _ face!” _ Nico laughed. “You’ve got-- It’s--  _ Your face!” _

Will flopped onto his back as Nico curled into a ball on his side and tried to control his laughter. Will reached blindly for the nightstand in search for his phone, hitting the home button a few times before he realized that it must’ve been dead. He lifted it up anyway, looking at his reflection on the blank screen, and frowned. It took him a moment to decipher the words since they appeared backwards in the reflection - the pounding headache wasn’t much help either - but soon he understood.

Written across his forehead were the words  _ I love Nico. _

“Did you do this?” 

“I don’t remember,” Nico told him, his laughter finally subsiding. 

Will set his phone back down before rolling over, half on top of Nico with his nose buried in Nico’s hair. “Well, it’s true.”

“Huh?”

“I love you.”

“Oh,” Nico whispered. He slipped an arm around Will’s waist and nuzzled into his chest. “I love you, too.”

 

V.

 

They’d gotten a house on the outskirts of the city, though it was still plenty close enough for both of them to make it to class without a problem. With the start of their last semester in undergrad just around the corner, they couldn’t be worrying about commute times. 

The house needed a little bit of work - new trim here and there, a fresh coat of paint in a couple of the rooms, just minor things - but they settled on just painting their bedroom for the time being. They’d gone out, picked out a simple neutral color, and bought enough paint for the room and supplies to last them through painting the rest of the house. 

Nico taped off the trim as Will started rolling paint onto the wall, and then once it was time to cut in, Will volunteered to finish up while Nico went out to pick up dinner from the Mediterranean place down the street. 

Nico didn’t think he’d been gone very long, but by the time he returned with dinner, Will had just about finished with the painting. Nico stepped into the bedroom to admire his work, and watched as Will ran a paint-covered hand through his hair. Nico smiled at him. 

“It looks great, babe,” he started, stepping toward him. “But it also looks like you got more paint on your face than on the walls.” He brushed his thumb across Will’s forehead, wiping away some of the paint. He showed it to Will before smearing it across his cheek.

“Hey!” Will exclaimed. He bent over and swiped his fingers through the paint tray on the ground before he rubbed it into Nico’s face.

_ “Will!” _ Nico shouted, trying to scrub the paint off his face. He shoved Will away with a laugh before Will could wipe any more paint onto him, and Nico ran into the kitchen. He held the bag of takeout between them like an offering. “Truce! Wash that paint off your hands so we can eat.”

 

+I

 

It was rare to have both of their sisters in town at the same time, so in order to get everyone together, Nico and Will had a movie night at their house. They’d intended to only invite Hazel and Kayla, but Hazel insisted on bringing Frank, and somehow Jason had found out and invited himself and Piper. Nico didn’t mind. It just meant that there would be a bigger audience.

After everyone arrived, Will ordered pizza, and they decided to wait until it was delivered before starting the movie. While Nico sat tucked into the corner of the couch, Will leaned against the back of the armchair nearby, staring at his boyfriend with love in his eyes.

“Would you quit it with the heart eyes?” Kayla called out. “Some of us are trying to be happily single, and none of us need to see  _ that.” _

Nico tipped his head toward Will to see that he hadn’t dialed the love down at all, and smiled up at his boyfriend. “What? Do I have something on my face?” He reached up, brushing his hair back from his forehead, causing Will to gasp.

Written across Nico’s forehead were the words,  _ Marry Me? _

Will was frozen to the spot until Nico reached between the couch cushions and pulled out a ring box, flicking it open with his thumb and revealing a silver band.

In a second, Will had tackled Nico into the couch, wrapping his arms around his boyfriend -  _ fiance? _ No, he had to say the word  _ yes _ before it was  _ fiance, _ but he didn’t think he could manage to form any words. He could hear Nico laughing into his ear, his arms wrapping around Will’s back. Somewhere around them there was cheering and clapping and whistling, but Will didn’t care about that.

He pulled back, framing Nico’s face in his hands, and pressed their lips together. The kiss tasted salty - was Will crying? When had that started? - so Will pulled away and kissed the letters across Nico’s forehead.

“Is that a yes?” Nico asked, wiping away Will’s tears with his thumbs. 

_ “Yes!” _ Will exclaimed, and fresh tears started to fall. “Yes, of course,  _ yes!” _

Will settled down on the couch and pulled a still-laughing Nico onto his lap, hiding his face in Nico’s neck. As he did so, the doorbell rang, signaling the arrival of their pizza.

“Can somebody get that?” Nico asked. “I don’t think he’s going to let me up any time soon.”

“I’m not.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!


End file.
